Materialty – that which constitutes the matter of something. It’s a quote from the article Material/Materiality. There’s a lot of the article that stuck with me, but this really quote resonated with me for a couple of reasons. First off was its simplicity. There is something to be said about the formality of matter and material, but with regards to this quote, it is the word “matter” which got me to thinking about the George P Johnson (GPJ) collection and the idea of his collection as a medium of communication between one era and another. The physical objects reflect not only an assortment of media and LMPC related items, but a window into a time and space where media and materiality were handled, interpreted and organized in different ways. I thought a lot about the transcripts of the interview of GPJ as well and how these items related to his personal experience of the world.
He wasn’t a man who lived passively. He interacted with the world around him in a way that reflected a constant search for information and a need for self-empowerment. He was entrepreneurial. He may or may not have been lonely. He moved a lot. He kept records of the world around him that reflected his POV, in a world where that POV was largely unseen. He felt there was value in the physical record of the past, in text, and in his understanding of the world. Touching the collection brought that to life in really interesting ways. Trying to understand what he was trying to communicate through certain artifacts sometimes proved overwhelming. It also eventually informed my understanding of the collecting as a single, living and breathing document. It has to have different meanings for different people. If it didn’t exist there would be no examination of the meaning whatsoever. Somehow in my interaction with the records and artifacts he so dutifully saved, I got the sense that he understood that. History is always open to interpretation, but not if its forgotten. This may be my reading of the collection, but in the end that’s all it would ever be in any case, a personal set of observations and interpretations.
GPJ cared deeply about the documentation of the state of affairs for black people over the period of his lifetime, and seemed to be cognizant of the fact that archival and curatorial efforts were going to be the work of whoever decided to undertake them. I thought about negro histories that have been lost to time and how he many have thought of them as well, determined to prevent the loss of the history he could see, hear and document himself. I came to care deeply about the collection and it’s presentation, knowing that my interpretation could be put forth, observed, and even challenged. But as long